My Name is Trouble, and My Soul is Broken
by Dawnstep
Summary: Roy Mustang is more alone now than he has been his entire life, and that's saying something.


My Name is Trouble, and My Soul is Broken

Genre: romance, angst

Pairing: Roy/Ed

Rating: T

Word Count: 2,032

Soundtrack: My Name is Trouble – Nightmare of You

Disclaimer: I own as little of this as Ed owns tact, and this fic generates no money whatsoever.

Summary: Roy Mustang is more alone now than he has been his entire life, and that's saying something.

Comments: I love this song to death, and this thing's been half-done for about forever. Finally getting around to finishing and uploading it now. Enjoy!

-x-x-x-x-x-

_Well, I've had this secret_

No one had ever suspected him, that much was true. The front he put on, the womanizing exterior, none of that had ever been questioned, and he supposed that was lucky. However, he couldn't help but wonder: what would have happened if the mask had been pulled away to reveal the truth?

_And I feel it's time that you should know_

What if, for once in his life, he'd been completely honest with himself and all those around him? What if he'd ignored logic, thrown caution to the winds, told the dangers to go screw themselves, and taken the one risk that had been so very, very tempting? What if, what if, what if. That's what it always boiled down to.

_When I'm in your arms, it turns me on…_

And each of those what ifs could have added up to something more- something like owning up to the fact that every touch that brushed his skin, whether cool steel or warm flesh, every word directed at him, whether calm or worried or, as they were most often, scathing, affected him in a way not even the most gorgeous of his lovers ever had. No one got to him like that, it just wasn't something that happened… but happen it did.

_But I've got a conscience, too_

And yet what he wanted was wrong. After all, he was not only the subordinate, but also fourteen years his junior and... well… not of age. It really wasn't fair, but it wasn't allowed. And so he had waited, never content but keeping himself in check, as hard as it was.

_And it says my heart's never in tune with anything I do_

He'd had many lovers, mostly women, in that time when he was on the edge, and even he couldn't deny the fact that many of them had been blondes. Also, there was the odd fact that almost all of them seemed to be shorter than him and quite a few more than was usual for him had been male. However, despite these odd patterns, there remained the fact that they were mostly one-night stands, nothing more, nothing less, and just about none of them ever held any permanent place in his heart. This was his perfect, unbreakable, infinitely impenetrable mask, and it was the one he wore every day of his life. Sometimes he wondered if even his most loyal friends believed it, and most of the time he was forced to conclude that they did.

_So this is the last time that I will hold your hand_

Despite that, though, or perhaps because of it, he continued to drop hints, perhaps too many of them, towards his true desire. He had snuck in every touch possible, his hands lingering longer than necessary on a stilled arm, his movements purposefully a bit too close to be entirely platonic but far enough away not to raise suspicion. He was a master at it by now, and he supposed that was lucky, because if there was one thing the boy was, it was sharp. He was a very intelligent, very observant person, so the uncaring act had to be absolutely perfect. No less was acceptable, and yet he found himself purposefully leaving cracks in it sometimes. Why was that? 

_I want to kiss you on the mouth and tell you I'm your biggest fan_

Actually, he knew why. Not that it made any difference, because he couldn't act on it, but he knew why it was that he allowed himself to fail sometimes, and why he was even… strangely happy whenever it happened. It was because the one weakness he was never supposed to have, his Achilles' Heel, if you will, had been unknowingly found and exploited.

_I'm your biggest fan_

He had fallen in love.

_I've had this secret, and now it's time that you should know_

He had fallen in love, then had that dream shattered and thrown to the winds, as fragile as a butterfly's wings as it blew away on the tide of cynics.

_I was wrong to string you along_

He was an idiot. He was an idiot. He was a low-rate, third-class sonuvagun _fool._ This was all. His. Fault. If he'd moved faster- been more honest- understood his own feelings then he would have had a chance- been loved- not lost his opportunity to have the only thing he'd never known himself to want.

_Circulating the streets in the pulsating heat_

He was empty now, his eyes black as midnight on a mockingbird's wings and his face devoid of any emotion he'd ever shown.

He was desperate now, but whether the want was for death or answers or the purest form of life, for the pure embodiment of fire, for the human form of light itself, he did not know.

He was human now, his every falsity taken apart and tossed out to lower him to a level he'd thought was simply below him. How very wrong he'd been.

He was in love now, and somehow he could wish for no other existence.

_I scoured your town, completely aroused_

He didn't know what notion had pulled him back here, to the place he'd been both worshipped and detested, but here he was. He stood next to the charred tree, its branches forever bare, and he stared intently at what little remained of the house that was once a home. No, wait, not a home; a roost. A roost for an angel.

_Making love to your memory_

He sighed, his eyelids fluttering closed as he imagined a light touch on his shoulder. He turned, and was met with spun gold and molten brass and he smiled and he laughed and he leaned forward, gently, slowly, and pressed their lips together, and there was a moan and his lips parted and—

And nothing. Nothing, because there was nothing left now- nothing of Edward, and nothing of himself, and certainly nothing of his much-abused soul.

_So this is the last time that I will hold your hand; I want to kiss you on the mouth and tell you I'm your biggest fan_

His eyes flickered back open, and a breathy groan slipped from his lips as he touched two fingers to them and slid to his knees, gasping and panting. This… this… he didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve even this slightest touch of happiness which was the product of his dreaming; he had failed, and the effects of his failure were far-reaching and permanent. Unless he wanted to risk another invasion, he couldn't open the Gate, and if the Gate was closed so was his only route to the place his heart was calling him to be.

_This is the last time that I will hold your hand; I want to kiss you on the mouth and tell you I'm your biggest fan_

It was surely a sign of something, he thought distantly, that he hadn't been strong enough to walk away, but only to stand there with Alphonse and break. It hadn't been him, then, had it, who'd had enough self-control (or else not enough feelings, but he didn't want to think like that) to turn and separate the two worlds and so many hearts. He was weak, really, in comparison.

_Sad minion of mine, don't be so unkind_

Of course, there was always that second option, the one he didn't want to even consider, that suggested it wasn't a matter of strength, but rather one of unfeelingness and not enough emotional ties to want to stay as much as Roy had wanted him to stay. But then again, it wasn't just him, was it- also left behind had been the only almost-family that were left to him. So surely it had been strength… surely, surely.

_I know I stole your coat- you can have this song I wrote_

Thus assured- temporarily, at least- that the departure from Amestris of one Edward Elric was not for lack of wanting to stay, he allowed his mind to wander a bit more, dancing all over the place as he slowly sank to the ground at the foot of the tree, his now-glazed eyes still focused on the long-abandoned house.

One of the many things that crossed his mind at this time was the faintest flicker of comfort at the thought of what was, even now, locked safely in a vault at his home in Central, tucked into the corner of the study and shrouded intentionally in shadow, the better to be concealed from prying eyes that might enter the room and wonder about it.

There, in that small safe back in his place of residence (not home, never home; nothing, after all, had felt like home to him in the longest time), was what might at first appear to be a plain bolt of red fabric, worn, old, and in some places stained with the typical elements of long journeys such as mud or the most occasional spot of what might perhaps be blood, folded neatly into a perfect square. Upon closer inspection, however, and upon unfolding the thing, it was discovered to be not so plain at all. It was a cloak, sized for someone of a rather small stature, with a hood and, on the back, a black caduceus, the mark of an alchemist.

The most wonderful thing about it, of course, was that it still bore the faintest hint of the smell of its previous possessor and rightful owner.

_I've just crossed the line from fashion to crime_

Sometimes, late at night when the shadows whispered to him of all his failures and he lost his faith in the better things in life, he would go to his study, turn the lock on the safe to the proper combination (3-10-11), pull out the red square of fabric, sit down slowly in the armchair in the corner of the room, and just hold the thing to his cheek, breathing in slowly and carefully in deep, measured, calming units, sucking in the scent that lingered on the worn fabric: smoke, certainly, and a definite tinge of sulfur, hidden underneath the cloying odor of dust and old country roads. Underneath the road scents, though, and the alchemy scents, was something infinitely more precious, and what he kept the cloak around for: a unique sort of musk, warm and foresty and giving a definite impression of strength and power.

Fitting, surely, for the one who'd carried it on his person, leaving trails through the air as he walked by.

_Sad minion of mine, don't be so unkind; I know I stole your coat- you can have this song I wrote_

There was a kind of embarrassing weakness about the fact that he'd stolen the coat, of course, but there was also the fact that many nights he suspected it was all that kept him sane, what with the reality of the fact that the person who the iconic article of clothing belonged to would probably never be seen in that world again.

_I've just crossed the line from fashion to crime…_

And that was the worst part, wasn't it? Not that he was gone, but rather that he was never, ever coming back; all that now remained of Edward Elric, at least in Amestris, were memories, photographs, military records, a broken heart, and a red cloak.

_So this is the last time that I will hold your hand; I want to kiss you on the mouth and tell you I'm your biggest fan… so this is the last time that I will hold your hand; I want to kiss you on the mouth and tell you I'm your biggest fan_

And maybe, Roy Mustang mused as he sat underneath the tree that was most of what remained of the once-happy Elric household in a rural corner of Amestris just outside the small town of Resembool, that was all that was needed. Maybe the answer wasn't life, but death: the death of a presence in one case, and the death of a broken man in another.

Perhaps he should give that some deeper thought.

_I'm your biggest fan…_

-x-x-x-x-x-

…eh… fail ending is fail? Erm. Yeah. Attacked, once again, by this one. ^-^;; Also, yeah, I kinda scewed with the canon a bit… heh. Uh… other than that… yeah. Not much to say here…

Disclaimer: Neither My Name is Trouble nor Fullmetal Alchemist is mine. My Name is Trouble belongs to Nightmare of You, and FMA belongs, of course, to Hiromu Arakawa.


End file.
